Singer Herbert Léonard died at 80 years old lung cancer

When it was announced, the melody resonates with our ears. It is the magic of Herbert Léonard’s tube, For fun, released in 1981.

A career made of very high and very low; thunderous beginnings, shattering falls and triumphant returns. The story begins well. Hubert Lœnhardt born in Strasbourg in 1944 of a garbage father and a housewife, was very quickly intended for music.

With his guitar he participated in a few groups including the lion cubs who, in the mid -1960s, became known by taking up songs from the Beatles. Beautiful physics, beautiful voice and a certain talent on the guitar point it out. The one who is now called Herbert Léonard is the first part of Chuck Berry.

Spotted by Lee Hallyday, Johnny’s artistic director, he recorded his first songs, including a promising Something in my heart. The Buster Keaton of the French variety – it is cold, distant and not very smiling (“Like any good Alsatian”, he liked to clarify)-sees his mowing ascent. In 1970, while riding on the roads of Belgium, he was the victim of a car accident.

«I took a fourth turn and at the time without a seat belthe explained to Thierry Ardisson’s. I was disfigured. I looked like the creation of Frankenstein. I didn’t really want to look at myself in an ice cream. I didn’t go out, I was cloistered. I said to myself it’s over.»

Specialist in Soviet military aviation

A saying says that when it comes to glory, we descend by the elevator, but we only go up by the stairs. Absent for a year, Herbert Léonard was not expected, neither by the profession nor by the public. Starts a long crossing of the desert. Or rather Urals. Léonard the singer turns into an author: he collaborates in Aviation magazine And is passionate (and specializes) for Soviet military aviation. Polikarpov, Tupolev or other Iliouchine have no secrets for him.

« It was a passion for mehe confided in 2004. I read Aviation magazine And I discovered a photo of the i-207 and I wondered how such a thing could fly. Rather than writing like everyone else on French and German planes, I specialized among the Russians. »

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This niche, but food work does not prevent it from still gravitating in the world of music. He works with Gérard Manset – a failure -, magnifying the musical Hair (We will prefer Gérard Lenorman to use the role of Julien Clerc) and meets in 1980 a young composer who will relaunch him.

Magic meeting with Julien Lepers

« The Vline Buggy parolier with whom I had kept contacts told me that if she found the composer who would love me. She invited me one day to her and introduced me Julien Lepers He detailed in 2023 in a program on C8. Whoever is not yet a game host and who timidly tries to break into music offers him the hits melody par excellence: For pleasure. Buggy signs the lyrics and Léonard records ” Without waiting for nothing, just for fun ». It will be a triumph. His career is relaunched.

The tubes will be linked : Crazy lover (with Julie Piétri), When you love me, on erotic music, let us dream… The Léonard-lepers duo triumphs thanks to a musical model inspired by Barry White (” I have a little less serious voice »), Where everything is hot: the melody, the voice and the lyrics (“I have only one country that of your body. I have only sin your gold triangle »). In less than ten years, it sells nearly ten million records. The 1980s were those of Léonard who also signs the title song of the successful soap opera of antenna 2, Châteauvallonluck Dallas French, wiser and more “cheap”, but with 14 million viewers. Power and glory. Then setbacks.

Herbert Léonard’s career will not resist the new decade. In the absence of new tubes, he signed some remarkable performances, especially in the musical Notre-Dame de Paris where he replaces Daniel Lavoie in the role of Frolo. Best-infs to the shovel remixed its former successes. Health troubles – Pulmonary edema, 32 days of coma, covid, etc. – will keep Léonard from the place where the public has never abandoned it: the scene. There remains this bewitching voice of this “Blue-Eyed Soul” (as the Americans call the whites who sing of the “Rhythm and Blues) which sang in 1987, as a promise, “You can never forget me”.